See You at the Maypole

パイングローヴ創設メンバー、ドリーム・ポップとエクスペリメンタルを繋ぐ過去一番の澄み渡った傑作!

惜しくも解散してしまった最新USインディ伝説パイングローヴ。その創設メンバーでありキーボーディストだったナンディ・ローズが、ハーフ・ウェイフ名義で6枚目となる新作『SEE YOU AT THE MAYPOLE』をANTI-からリリース!

パイングローヴ時代からの付き合いで公私共にパートナーとなったザック・レヴィン、ミキサーにビッグ・シーフやボン・イヴェールを担当してきたアンドリュー・サーロと今現在ナンディが呼べる叡知が大集結した本作。ナンディを媒介に参加者達の色が化学反応を起こす瞬間は、"Big Dipper"の感傷を誘うピアノとメロディに絡む少し曇りがかったSE、"Figurine"のボン・イヴェールに通じるどこまでもゆったりと広がるサウンドスケープに感じます。そこにはドリーム・ポップとエクスペリメンタルを繋げた逞しさが! 6枚目にして集った才能をハーフ・ウェイフという名で剛速球を投げてくるようになったナンディから目が離せない!

After releasing such relatively dark, intense, increasingly lush albums as The Caretaker and Mythopoetics in the early 2020s that took on subject matter like generational trauma, diaspora, and endurance in the face of current events, Half Waifs Nandi Rose Plunkett had every intention of making something lighter and more celebratory, especially after finding out she was pregnant. While adhering to the idea of simpler arrangements and warmer surfaces, her sixth album, See You at the Maypole, ended up taking on a much more complex and poignant demeanor following a series of personal losses that included family illness and her own miscarriage. She opens the album with the sleek and reverent "Fog Winter Balsam Jade," a song that poetically enumerates memories she associates with her pregnancy and that contains lines like "You were my first/You made me a mother" and "I will not despair this time of year…Oh you cant say Im not trying." Plunkett intentionally approached the recording of these songs collaboratively, and shes joined here not only by Mythopoetics producer Zubin Hensler -- her sole collaborator on that album -- but also a rotating band that includes current and former Pinegrove bandmates Zack Levine (percussion) and Josh Marre (guitar), Marta Sanchez Quintets Jason Burger (percussion), avant-garde musician Spencer Zahn (upright bass), and several other musicians on chamber instruments including harp, clarinet, and violin. The album was mixed partly by Hensler and, in perhaps another indication of those warmer textures, partly by Andrew Sarlo (Big Thief, Bon Iver). Having said that, more-ominous and electronics-injected material on board includes the choir-featuring "I-90," the intimate but bloopy "Heartwood," the lusher and driving "Dust," and the alt-R&B-infused "Ephemeral Being." Generally even more affecting are relatively spare entries like the lilting, piano-centric ballad "Sunset Hunting," the eerie "Violetlight" ("Enclosing a disaster"), and the environmental "Mother Tongue" ("I should be angry/But Im just tired"), although nothing on See You at the Maypole is simple or without determination. ~ Marcy Donelson